Synonyms
Corporate vehicles; Dummy companies; Front companies; Holding companies; Hollow companies; Letterbox companies; Mailbox companies; Special purpose vehicles
Definition/Introduction
A shell company is a legally incorporated entity that may consist of nothing more than a postal address of a registering agency and a contact person at that address.
Description
Examples fitting our definition could be found in the 200,000 or more companies registered at 1209 North Orange Street in Wilmington, Delaware (Obermayer and Obermaier 2016). Findley et al. (2013) offered a crude definition of a shell company taken from the website of a firm in Wyoming that marketed and housed over 2000 shell companies. “A corporation is a legal person created by state statute that can be used as a fall guy, a servant, a good friend or a decoy… A person you can control … yet cannot be held accountable for its actions. Imagine the possibilities!” Obermayer and Obermaier (2016) quoted a former US tax...
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Michalos, A.C. (2023). Shell Companies. In: Poff, D.C., Michalos, A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22767-8_277
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22767-8_277
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